A World for Dreams
by LoyaulteMeLie
Summary: Follow-up to 'Big Bad Wolf'. All is calm in the Mirror Universe, until Reed pays a visit to the Jupiter Yards, where he encounters some old friends.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note:**_ **Star Trek and all its intellectual property belongs to Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no money made.**

 **Please note: Although not graphic, this story contains some bad language, sex references and scenes of torture and death. It is rated for non-con. If these issues offend you, please do not read it.**

 **Beta'd by Mandassina, to whom I am extremely grateful, and to whom this story is dedicated.**

* * *

Ah. Here we are at last: the Jupiter yards.

Last time I was here it was a right mess, filled with quarter-finished ships swarmed over by half-arsed repair and construction teams who got in each other's way more than they co-operated to achieve anything. Today – it must be said, even if I certainly don't say it aloud – it looks good. Damned good.

 _Worryingly_ damned good, in fact.

We had been kept informed that excellent progress was being made. We naturally discounted at least half of the praise the narrator lavished on the project; humans are such romanticisers. But even with this elimination, when we sat down to review the end-of-year reports it surprised both of us that so much could have been done in so short a time.

With the war still very much in the balance, it seemed only wise for one of us to carry out a personal inspection. After all, although we trust our own, there are only two people whose judgment we trust implicitly.

Each other.

I lean against the viewing port, studying the station, and yes – I'm impressed. Seriously impressed, and more bothered than I care to admit.

Naturally I'm more than pleased by the progress, but control and organisation on this scale indicates the presence of power. And power is not something we encourage in the Empire. Except our own, of course.

I don't say anything. Silence is one of my deadliest weapons. I just look, and keep my counsel.

=/\=

It was brought to my attention a while ago that the captain of the _Sirius_ had recently described me (at a private function) as a 'delicious little asshole'. On my coming on board I showed my appreciation of this description; first I nailed her on the bed, and then I nailed her to the wall at the back of the Bridge. It has to be said that the crew coped remarkably well with the noise, but then, they've seen battle and know that you can't stop doing your job just because of a bit of screaming going on in the background.

(Alpha thought my reprisal was 'piquant'. I'm so glad we share the same sort of sense of humour.)

So I've a sort of fondness for the _Sirius_ , and it made me happy to promote Em to the newly-vacant captain's chair for the duration of the voyage. It wasn't as if she was likely to need to do any captaining (she's got a SiC to do that sort of thing if it needs doing), what with three fairly handy-looking warships as escort. She could just sit in the chair and look deliciously fuckable, a feat which she manages to achieve almost without trying even when she's not in my quarters wearing skimpy lace undies and a 'Come on, if you think you're hard enough' expression. As a matter of fact she did this so well the first day that I borrowed the aforementioned chair for an extraordinarily pleasurable twenty minutes while she knelt in front of me and demonstrated her gratitude for favours received, to which the previous occupant's sound-effects made an intermittent background.

This sort of introduction to the new command structure always produces a gratifying degree of efficiency in the lower orders of the hierarchy. As I stroll onto the Bridge now, it's quite remarkable how everyone present straightens up and becomes even more assiduously busy than they've been beforehand. Em, of course, is happily practising her knife throwing, though she has the grace to look slightly sheepish when I catch her at it. After all, the captain's chair is generally supposed to face forward, just in case, and really the body's starting to look a bit ... well ... _punctured_ , as well as not smelling all that nice by this time. But I'm prepared to cut her a little slack in the circumstances, though I make a note to order somebody to clear the mess up before I get back. It's just not _tidy._

So. As Em rises out of respect for her commanding officer, I nod to her to resume her seat. She swings it around and we both contemplate the view-screen, though I won't deny that some of my attention wanders occasionally in the direction of her splendid cleavage, which is now directly below and in front of me. She really has the most magnificent...

Ahem. The shipyards. Yes.

Tucker was Forrest's protégé. Archer tolerated him, mostly because he hadn't got anyone better and Tucker knew how to talk himself into appearing indispensable. Forrest, though, had a real belief in the misshapen oaf's talents – it was he who put him in charge of _Enterprise_ , giving him a delusion of his own importance in the scheme of things.

Psha. I think there were those who saw him as some kind of White Knight, some would-be hero who saw it as his life's work to get rid of me. Me! I wonder how he enjoyed watching the transmissions as Alpha and I took our places at either side of the Empress's throne. If he thought her having her arse on the velvet was any sign of her having power over us, though, he was even more delusional than I'd imagined. Sato's our figurehead now, our pawn. People are used to her, and she gets most of the blame for the Empire's little faults; and besides, if anyone gets around to arranging a successful assassination (unlikely, but never say 'never'), it's most likely Hoshi who'll be the target. We don't mind not being centre stage, and after all, it keeps her amused and out of trouble. We even fuck her occasionally, when we're not fucking each other.

(Mayweather... now I have to admit, he was fun. While he lasted, of course. A lot of fun. I always knew he had stamina.)

Tucker as a hero, though! I laugh silently at the thought. There are security tapes from half a dozen not-so-discreet 'establishments' that could give the lie to that. Has some unusual tastes, does Trip Tucker. I wonder how T'Pol fares o'nights, shackled to his bed ready for when he wants an itch scratched. I hope she enjoys variety.

 _Sirius_ slows slightly to allow _Dreadnought_ to approach the yards' command centre first. _Invictus_ glides into position, every weapon trained at a different part of the structure. One blink from _Dreadnought_ to show her scanners indicate the presence of a weapon in there, and the whole centre will disappear in a fiery inferno. _Conqueror_ remains beside us, ever vigilant. I'm so touched Alpha assigned her to me. He's an absolute softie, when you get to know him... well, that's the sort of thing people usually say about the strong silent type, though I'm not sure he'd thank me for applying it to him, even if it was accurate.

A wash of memory assails me: the morning I left him back on Earth. His immaculate white bedding, and his beautiful body naked in it. The morning sunshine slanting through the window making his blue eyes more luminous than ever as we made love. He bit my shoulder blades, making me shudder with lust.

 _Dreadnought_ reports in. "All clear, _Sirius._ "

"Acknowledged." Em looks up at me. "Your escort's waiting, sir."

"Accompany me to the shuttlebay, Captain."

"Sir."

She knows perfectly well why, of course. The turbo-lift doors are hardly shut before she slaps a hand on the emergency stop panel and unzips her uniform jacket.

Being captain, she can excuse herself from wearing the regulation undershirt. Being familiar with my little ways, she has taken this precaution. I can only applaud her foresight. Happily she also elected to dispense with a bra as well, and so the parting of the two sides of the overburdened jacket is a sight guaranteed to bring instant life to any male organ still attached to the parent groin.

I render due appreciation during the very few moments it takes for her deft hands to remove any other barriers to our mutual satisfaction. Very shortly after that both of her long legs are wrapped around my hips and the lift cabin is juddering to the impacts.

We're both restored to respectability when the turbo-lift arrives at H Deck, though the MACO guard of honour there probably appreciate the fact that her face is becomingly flushed and her re-confined bosom is still heaving like a stormy sea. An attractive woman, is Em, and no doubt when she comes off shift and goes on the prowl there will be few cabins where she won't receive an enthusiastic welcome that's rather more than dutiful. I'd take her with me, but she and Tucker never got on and this is supposed to be a fact-finding mission rather than a bear-baiting. Not that I'm claiming he and I ever got on either, but I'm probably a bit more subtle than Em; I can slip a needle under a nail where she'd have the fingers torn off. And little as I like the man in the general way, Tucker's fingers are useful where they are. On principle, I prefer to leave particularly skilled digits attached if at all possible.

She escorts us to the shuttle-bay, and waits while the standard checks are performed. As soon as my transport is declared safe and ready to fly, I step on board.

I don't know why I turn around and look at her. It's not something I'd normally do, and with my desire temporarily sated it's not as if I find her any more than aesthetically pleasing. But she's there, and I don't know, she's ...

 _Getting soft in your old age, aren't you?_

She sees me looking and snaps off a salute. She's so rigid now you'd never believe that less than ten minutes ago she was a series of liquid, writhing curves in my grip. I acknowledge the salute with a brief nod, and then the shuttle door closes, cutting her off from my sight.

In the aftermath of sex I feel relaxed. I make my way to the seat from which I can watch the pilot and weapons officer; not that I suspect them of any lack of efficiency, but I like to keep an eye on things anyway. It keeps people on their toes, which is where I like them to be, and I'm perfectly happy to suspend them by their wrists to get them there, if that's what it takes.

The shuttlepod drops away from _Sirius_ 's underbelly and curves smoothly towards the control centre's landing pad. As we approach, I break into the station's security feed with the shuttle's sophisticated spy systems and skim rapidly over the images. Only one makes me pause briefly: a naked figure lying on the floor. Her hair's loose and matted, and as she shifts I bring the image in closer. Her body's as magnificent as ever, if you disregard the bite marks and bruises, but her face ... even I feel a faint shudder run through me, seeing how the once smouldering intelligence in it has been washed away into almost drooling idiocy. Evidently Tucker hasn't lost his appetite for her, though there again I don't suppose he spends much time admiring her face. So much for the White Knight...

A wedge of the pad's domed cover opens to admit us, and as the shuttle lands as lightly as a butterfly on the grating it closes again overhead. The external O2 readings begin rising as air is pumped in. The figures spool quickly, even quicker than they used to on _Enterprise_. This site doesn't waste time.

Green lights come on above the door, including the one that says the external atmosphere contains no unexpectedly unfriendly substances; considering how easy it would be to introduce an airborne toxin by way of an extra greeting, I prefer not to take chances. It's safe for us to leave.

One of the escort pushes the lever to open the hatch, which slides smoothly to one side with a pneumatic hiss as the seals disengage.

Several people are stepping down from the control booth. One of them is instantly recognisable; with his new-found status (and presumably wealth), Tucker's had some reconstructive surgery to the side of his face, but it's not really enough to hide the damage. He probably still fucks with the light off, unless it's T'Pol, whose opinion of his looks is completely irrelevant. At a guess, the other two are his deputies – he'll be quite aware that it's diplomatic to put on some kind of a welcoming committee for me. I remind myself, though, that here is the centre of that power that can make such revolutionary changes to a massive station. It may pay us to keep a far closer eye than we have done up till now on our Commander Tucker.

In the meantime, however, he has to exercise his always acute talent for self-preservation, and accord me the appropriate respect.

Lord, how he must be hating every minute of it... it's all I can do not to laugh.


	2. Chapter 2

My escort leave the shuttlepod first. As a matter of course they run scanners around the landing-pad, and then they line up as the honour guard they are as I step out onto the grating.

The control booth door opens again and someone else steps out whom I recognise instantly, and it's not a pleasure. I haven't seen Phlox for a while, and I damn well haven't missed the experience either. I've no idea what he's doing here, though at a guess he's been borrowing technical experts from Tucker's staff for some new project or other. I don't know and I don't care, frankly I'd have spaced him before now if Alpha hadn't had some vague idea that he might be 'useful'. Slimy Denobulan bastard.

He's late. He hurries to catch up with the welcoming detail, and for some reason his expression catches my attention. It's fawning of course – hell, I think the bastard grovels in his sleep – but there's something, some quickly-hidden flicker of interest in my direction, which sets a faint but deep-seated note of alarm sounding.

He knows which side his bread's buttered on, does Phlox. Knows to an inch what he can get away with. The fright he had with Archer taught him the discretion of survival; he so nearly backed the wrong horse that day. So why the fuck is he looking at me like – yes, like I'm a candidate for one of his bloody vivisection projects? I'll teach him to look at me. One word from me and he'll be looking back at his own face, though with the optic nerves ripped in two he won't have much of a view.

Resolving that if there's one peep out of him I'll arrange that _plus_ a few additional refinements, I transfer my gaze to Tucker. My sudden visceral unease settles a little at sight of his customary scowl. He's another one who's pushing his luck – thinks he's too important to be dispensable. Well, that might have been true while he was tied up reverse-engineering _Defiant_ , but we've got the complete schematic now. He's good, true; reluctantly I have to admit that he's bloody brilliant, scarred face and all, and the status of this station is ample testament to just _how_ brilliant; but in a power-hungry Empire there are always clever little weasels pushing their way upward on the faces of their fellows. Back on Earth, Kelby fawns and schemes and tells anyone who'll listen that Tucker's a has-been, a fluke, a man who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He may be right and he may be wrong, but in ways such as these the balance of power shifts in the Empire. Personally I think Kelby's a bitter little shit who missed his chance, but he's persistent, I'll give him that. If he drips enough poison in the right ears, who knows? His day may come yet...

Still. The fact that that day hasn't yet dawned no doubt gives Tucker the bravado to neglect the welcoming smile. Not that I'd have believed in it if he'd produced it, nor that it's a thing of beauty when he does smile, with the scarring dragging the muscles awry, but I suppose both of us are past the pretence of that sort of thing. He renders me due respect – his salute is precision itself. And after all, that's what matters. I have power and he knows it. He doesn't have to like me.

"I have the figures ready for your inspection, sir," he says, his voice just – just! – on the right side of irony. "I thought you'd prefer to take some refreshment while you look over them. The staff on board _Sirius_ transmitted your exact preferences."

Well, now, that's very thoughtful. The chef on board my flagship is a genius. He did have some delusions when he came on board about the necessity to serve up gourmet meals that took longer to describe than to cook, but I soon educated his palate. (Or was it a her? I know the name began with an A. Alice or something. Whatever.) He knows now how to cook fish and chips properly. Presumably he feels some professional compassion for the cooks on the command post, who might struggle to perform at optimum with one or more fingers removed. I'm not bothered about _them_ keeping the full set; one finger and an opposable thumb is enough to hold a spoon.

"I'm not particularly hungry at the moment, Commander, but some tea would be nice. I'd appreciate it if you could have your staff standing by. I may have questions for them in due course."

"There's nothing goes on in this station that I can't inform you on, sir," he replies flatly, falling back to allow me to walk towards the exit door. "If there's anything worth knowing, I make it my business to know it."

The fact that he's insubordinate enough to question my orders is so startling that I turn my head to glance at him. Admittedly they weren't specifically phrased as orders, but any fool with a brain between his ears would recognise that's exactly what they were. And Tucker – whatever else he may be – is no fool. His one lapse, into lovelorn idiocy with a hormonal Vulcan, was his last.

The turn of my head is exactly what he's counting on. For one fleeting second it takes Phlox out of my peripheral vision, and that second is all that's required.

He's not close enough to me to use a hypospray. He brings up his hand holding some kind of tiny device that spits out a dart, directly at me. At this range, even he can't miss.

At a guess, he was aiming for the muscles in my upper thigh. Unluckily for him, it hits me between the bones of my left hand, and even as I'm incredulously absorbing the fact that _Phlox_ has found the nerve to stick a pin in me, my right hand is stiffening into the blade that will break his neck like a twig.

It never connects. Even as I'm whirling to strike, the co-ordination in my body breaks down. The step back that ordinarily wouldn't save him means that rather than striking the base of his neck I flail past it. The tips of my fingers brush his chest (that's how close he is to death), but I can't stop, I can't control the weight of my body following through, and I crash to the floor.

My escort have specific instructions. It doesn't matter that for some fucking reason my limbs are like things that no longer belong to me in any meaningful sense, that my tongue won't work, my jaw won't move. The MACOs are my honour guard, hand-picked by Alpha himself; they have orders to kill everyone in the room if anything happens to me – except the assassin, who won't get off nearly that lightly. At least my ears and eyes still work, and the fact that my lungs are still functioning and my brain is clear suggests that whatever the dart delivered, at least it's not poison. Once Tucker and the others are dead, it shouldn't take too long to extract the antidote from Phlox – what the _fuck_ gave him the idea he could get away with a stunt like this? – and then he and I are going to have a very, very, _very_ long chat. Which he will enjoy a quite extraordinary amount less than I will. As a matter of fact I'll have it televised. That should top the viewing figures for sure.

I'm not normally slow on the uptake. I wouldn't have got where I am if I hadn't had the gift for sizing up a situation almost quicker than I can blink. But I've blinked several times before I realise that there are no guns firing. There's just a silence that I find more absolute than deafness.

After a moment or two, there's movement. But not the splintering, explosive movement of men trying to evade the righteous wrath of six highly-trained and very well-armed killers. It's a single movement, precisely aimed.

My nervous system may have stopped transmitting my orders to my muscles, but it's still functioning perfectly as regards transmitting pain. Tucker's boot slams into my ribs, and I suspect at least two of them break.

"Sir!" One of the MACOs raps the words out. "The prisoner is not to be damaged. Those are our orders. We will protect him with force. Deadly force if necessary."

'The _prisoner_ '?

A quavering voice comes over the internal speakers. "Inbound shuttle."

Well, this isn't the place for any of us to be when that entry port opens, not unless we particularly want to be sucked out into hard vacuum. I feel myself being picked up and carried, and realise that we're going into the control booth. There's evidently nowhere there that I can conveniently be placed, so I'm dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes, with only the minimum care taken that nothing breaks. It doesn't do my damaged ribs a lot of good, but I manage to muffle the small sound that I can't quite prevent from escaping.

My mind is racing. I've nothing to look at bar booted feet, and nothing to listen to but the faint mechanical sounds of the dome admitting another shuttlepod, so I turn my attention to working out who's responsible for this stunning turn of events. Sato ... it has to be Sato. I'd never have thought she'd have the brain to organise something this daring, not after she lost Mayweather to give her sound advice, but she's as cunning as a fox, and can be brave and ruthless if she thinks she'll win. Maybe having her arse on the velvet wasn't enough for her after all. Little bitch. If I get out of this alive she'll join Phlox on the television. I'll invent something for her so enthralling it'll be worth putting out on pay-per-view...

Alpha. She must have organised something of the same for him too. _Never divide your forces_ is an old and wise military adage, but what the fuck, _here?_ Right in the Sol system? We'd done such a careful job of consolidating our power, of getting the influential people on our side. I'd have sworn – I'd have bet my last credit on it – that if there was going to be a rebellion it wouldn't start here. Even Tucker wouldn't be fool enough to think he'd get a better deal from Sato that he has from us. On board _Enterprise_ she hardly noticed he existed; people were what interested her, not engines – except insofar as they drove the starships that are the tools of power.

The door to the landing pad finally reopens. I hear footfalls, but I can't turn my head. I simply stare into nothing, savagely waiting for information, for _anything_ that will give me a pointer to where I start fighting back.

No-one speaks. Presumably someone makes a gesture, though, because suddenly I'm being lifted again.

It may be coincidental that the bodies of the MACOs who are carrying me block my view of whoever it is who's arrived. Sato must be getting subtle in her old age. Normally she'd take the greatest pleasure in grinding the stiletto heel of her 'victory' into the face of her conquests. Still, no doubt that pleasure is merely being reserved for later. Frankly I don't give a shit. She can gloat as much as she likes, it won't worry me. There'll just be a few more notches on the tally-stick to be redeemed in full when the tables finally turn again.

It's a surprise to nobody that there's a gurney in the corridor outside. Thus Phlox's attendance. He supervises my disposal on it with scant regard for my dignity, and makes no attempt to hide his outsize grin of delight. Idly I recreate it in my mind's eye with his tongue torn out to the roots and dangling down through a rent in the underside of his jaw. It can be arranged, and will, if I have anything to say in the matter.

I'm pushed down corridors. They're like corridors everywhere, bleak, sterile, bland. My vision seems unable to focus long enough to read anything as I'm propelled quickly to some unknown destination, but it's probably only about three or four minutes before twin doors hiss back and I'm pushed into a room.

The fear that has lain coiled in the pit of my stomach suddenly springs to life, gripping me by the throat. It's an operating theatre.

 _Vivisection..._

I won't scream _(Yes you will,_ whispers the fear, _they all scream in the end...)_

I won't beg _(Not that you have a voice anyway,_ whispers the fear, _they've taken that away...)_

I won't give in without a fight _(But you're paralysed, helpless,_ whispers the fear, and now it sniggers audibly _. He can spread you like a starfish and gut you with a filleting knife, and there's fuck-all you can do about it...)_

I want to think that it's sheer rage that finally ratchets up the speed of my even breathing. A lot of it is, but I've never hidden from the truth, and the truth is now that I'm sick with horror and fear. Death comes for us all, and for as long as I can remember there was always the possibility that mine would be messy and painful. It's something I've lived with long enough to stare the reality of it in the face without flinching, but my whole being cringes away from it being like this – pinioned and helpless, dying by inches, with that grinning bastard's fingers delving around in my guts till finally my body can't take it any more and my heart stops once too often...

They lay me out on the butcher's slab, stripping me with emotionless efficiency before spread-eagling me into the quite superfluous restraints. I stare at the ceiling (not that I've any option) while I listen to Phlox prepping.

He finally steps over to me and I exert all the control I have over my body and will not to release a single breath he could mistake for a whimper. But to my perplexity, instead of waving an artistic scalpel while he decides precisely where to start carving, he simply stands beside the bed, waiting.

Ah. An audience is expected. Sato, no doubt. I wonder how long it'll take her to get bored. Probably not very, once I can't stay quiet any more.

Whatever I've been dosed with, it's good enough to stop my mouth moving to any significant degree. It would have afforded me some minor satisfaction to have instructed Phlox on what will happen to his wives and offspring once news of my demise gets out ( _Don't get mad, get even_ has always been one of my favourite maxims), but he'll just have to find out via the newscasts like everyone else. Still. It's nice to think he'll be taken by surprise just like I was.

I hear the door open. Phlox dips his head, carefully submissive. "Ma'am."

Footsteps cross the theatre. There's a slight pause, presumably while Sato dons sterile protective clothing. After all, we wouldn't want to get nasty red stains on that priceless Triaxian silk she likes to wear, would we?

Then, finally, she steps up beside the bed and into my field of vision.

It's not Sato.

It's Em.

For about half a second I enjoy the wonderful delusion that the cavalry has arrived in the nick of time. I envision which of the array of scalpels will be the first to land in Denobulan flesh. Not that she'll kill him quickly for this, oh no, she'll just let him a little blood and scare him shitless. He'll have the antidote to hand, nothing surer, and she'll get it out of him before you could say 'crushed genitals'. Then, when I'm free and moving again, the retribution will begin.

It's a nice half a second. I just wish it had lasted a bit longer, but as I said, I'm a realist. I recognise that blank stare down at me. I should do; I'm a master at it.

This is not a rescue.

"Everything went to plan, Ma'am?" Phlox asks politely. "There's plenty available?"

Her eyes are fathomless. "Of course. I harvested it at once." She passes over an insulated vial. "You're sure this will work?"

He nods eagerly. "I've done a number of trials. The success rate increases exponentially when we can introduce the host's DNA at the same time. Even just a small amount neutralises the defence mechanisms."

"Good." She looks down at me again, and pauses. "Put him out."

"Unconscious?" He seems puzzled and, I suspect, disappointed. "I assure you it's not necessary..."

Her eyes rise from me to him. He continues, with hardly a break, "...But on the other hand, it may well reduce the physiological trauma and improve the recovery time. After all, we want him to heal quickly afterwards, hmm?"

" _Exactamente_."

He moves to fetch something else – presumably the knockout stuff. For what seems like a long time, Em and I look at each other. It comes to me that I wish that she was the last thing I'd ever see, but that's not going to happen. There's going to be light at the other side of the darkness, and I'm not going to want to wake to see it. But then again, nobody around here cares what I think. I'm just something that has to recover quickly afterwards, and then... what?

The hypospray hisses against my neck. I struggle to make my lips move as the world starts to fade out; it's probably just naïveté on my part, but I'm not altogether convinced she gave the order because she was bothered about the physiological trauma. There again, maybe I read too much about that other _Enterprise_ in the _Defiant_ 's database. Talk about delusions of kindness.

"Em..." I'm not sure if I even manage a whisper before the darkness swallows me.


	3. Chapter 3

I break back into the light, choking for air.

It's there for me, hissing through an oxygen mask over my face. For a moment I'm too busy filling my lungs to think of much else, because that's what your average body craves more than anything else: breath.

Thought returns relatively slowly. Relatively, I say, because within the space of two inhalations I remember exactly what was going on when they switched my world off, and tension wells up in me at the thought of what and who I'm going to see when I open my eyes.

Medical sensors make it completely pointless to pretend to be unconscious when you're not. Gathering as much courage as my hands will hold, I force my slightly sticky lids open.

Still in Sickbay. Well, that's not entirely surprising. And it seems that I once more have the use of my body as opposed to being a powerless resident in it, though the merest flexion of my wrists assures me that nobody has made the mistake of leaving me with the ability to take advantage of this. If my arms are pinioned than doubtless my legs will be too; I've killed before now with a kick in the right place or a knee clamped into a choke-hold around a neck. Not that this would be a viable option right now anyway, for although I trust my legs are still attached, I can't feel them. Hopefully I will be able to verify their presence before too much longer, since having had them removed would be damnably inconvenient.

Phlox is standing over me, his eyes on the read-outs on the panel over my head. He looks exceptionally pleased with himself, which makes me more regretful than ever that I'm temporarily unable to rearrange his skeletal structure.

Em is at my other side. She's watching me wake up, and her expression is once again completely opaque.

I could speak to her now. Unless they've done something to my vocal cords of course, though a cautious, silent swallow suggests nothing's different there. But if there's anything to say I don't know what it could possibly be. From this point onwards we both know the other is doing what is necessary, and words would evaporate from that fact like drops of rainwater boiling off superheated duranium.

Thankfully she knows this as well as I do.

Moving with her usual economical grace, she lifts the cover that's now apparently lying across my belly – presumably more to protect the surgery site than to preserve my maidenly modesty. Sadly for my now rampant curiosity, a leather band across my forehead prevents me from lifting my head to inspect the damage with her. All I can see is her expression, which tells me nothing.

My abdomen is also in the realm of the 'presumably present'. There's a band across my chest, because I can feel the pressure of it as my ribs shift, but from the navel down – nothing. I'd never have known about that cover if I hadn't seen Em move it.

"No problems?" she asks, replacing the sheet carefully.

Phlox shakes his head, beaming. "None whatsoever. It was a complete success."

Various unpleasant alternatives present themselves as to 'what' could have been a complete success. The most obvious (to me, anyway) sends a wash of nausea over me that brings perspiration prickling out on my forehead. _Castrated..._

"And he will still function?"

It seems an extraordinarily long time before Phlox answers.

"Almost certainly. My test subjects retained full functionality." I almost shudder with relief, which may possibly be premature of course; functionality _of what_ was never specified. "While they survived," he adds with what seems to me quite unnecessary relish. "It did take a considerable time to determine the exact combination of hormones to balance matters, and it will probably be advisable to make – ah – _adjustments_ accordingly, when required." Phlox glances down at me with a look that makes my flesh crawl as he continues smoothly, "And, of course, have his condition monitored throughout."

"Of course." Her voice is bland, though I who know her so well suspect that there's the smallest ring of a blade in it. Phlox will be well advised to take the utmost care with Em.

She lifts the cover again and has another look. "So how long do you estimate it will be before we may proceed?"

That 'we' gives me pause for thought, even while the doctor hums and haws and talks about my strong constitution versus the necessity for giving 'Mother Nature' time to settle down. Em could be talking about 'we' as in general terms, as in whatever rebellion she's leading (not likely, on the whole, but not impossible), or she could be referring to whatever game she and Phlox are playing with me, or she's in cahoots with A N Other. Now who A N Other may be is the question on which the whole outcome of this probably rests. I'm not in the least saying that Em's not bright, but she's no long-term planner. If she has a plan outlined to her she'll pick it up like lightning and run with it, and she's more than capable of improvising should events depart from schedule, but she could no more play Chess than I could produce an Origami donkey.

At any rate, it seems that 'about three weeks' is the final estimate. Phlox being Phlox, he produces stipulations and makes demands for this and that 'to facilitate the healing process', to all of which Em agrees with a lack of emotion that would make him worry if he knew her as well as I do. To me, her impassive acquiescence feels far too much like a trap, and he's walking into it. It sounds like he's requisitioning half of the Empire's medical supplies, and presumably whatever's going on gives him so much leverage it's gone to his already weak head. Em, however, is nobody's fool. She'll pay out all the rope he asks for till the precise second he's no longer useful, and then she'll kick the stool out from under him and walk away.

So. Three weeks, before 'something' can be done with me, or _to_ me, presuming I've healed sufficiently. I find some relief in cursing silently at the thought of waiting twenty-one endless days before finding out what 'something' may consist of. It may even be that I'll have to wait till then before I find out exactly what's been done to me already; as agonising as that prospect may be, I have to come to terms with it. Waiting has never been my strong point, though in the days while I built up my power base I acquired some skill at it. Now, once again, that patience is to be put to the test.

In the meantime I'll play nice. I'll speak when spoken to (not that I suppose anybody will). If offered the opportunity I'll play the penitent prisoner, I'll out-grovel Phlox if I have to. I'll even smile forgivingly at Tucker when he comes to visit - I'm fairly sure he won't be able to resist the temptation to gloat. There won't be a more submissive, sorry prisoner in the Empire than me.

I can only pin all my belief into the hope that sooner or later, these shackles will come off.

And then – and _then–!_

 _'I will have such revenges on you both_

 _That all the world shall—I will do such things—_

 _What they are yet I know not, but they shall be_

 _The terrors of the earth.'_


	4. Chapter 4

If I ever get to experience eternity, I'll recognise it immediately.

Three weeks.

Twenty-one days; five hundred and four hours; thirty thousand, two hundred and forty minutes; one million, eight hundred and fourteen thousand, four hundred seconds. Every one of which I swear I've counted off, lying immobile on this bed while around me people came and went, servicing the needs of a body which continued to function.

After the first two weeks they began to reduce the pain meds. Feeling returned gradually below my waistline. Enough to reassure me that I still had two legs, and that I hadn't been wasting the hours I'd spent daily flexing and releasing the muscles to keep them in some kind of condition. I couldn't feel them, but I had to believe they were there and that I was achieving something. After all, I had to have a roughly serviceable pair of legs to stand on when I lunged for a weapon.

Legs, yes. Present and correct. I took what comfort I could from that. More comforting still was the sensation that presently came slightly further up. Much as Phlox would undoubtedly have enjoyed removing my kidneys for examination, if my continued existence was a requirement he'd probably have left them in place. Equipment further down the system was lower down the list of survival necessities, and it was an indescribable relief when I was able to determine that although a catheter was fitted, I seemed to have been left with the full set. It came as somewhat of a surprise one afternoon part way through the third week when a nurse set about testing 'functionality' among the daily processes. At first I thought _Fuck you,_ and then baser ideas took over. I'm not sure that what followed was exactly what Phlox had intended (though there again, he might well have been watching via the cc feed), but we definitely found out that I still functioned. Naturally she didn't make the mistake of loosing any of the restraints, but that didn't provide any serious bar to our enjoyment, on that or any of the other subsequent nocturnal visits. There was one unfortunate occasion when an unexpected visit from a lab technician obliged her to make a hasty exit, leaving me to the torments of the damned, but apart from that we had a rather agreeable interlude. I may even let her live when I get out of here, which is more than I will any of the rest of them, though our places in restraints will be exchanged and her consent will not be relevant.

I'm still no wiser as to what the surgery consisted of. Obviously it took place low on my belly, because the flesh there is tender and my angel of mercy had to take care how she arranged herself while we were testing my functionality. Naturally this required the removal of my catheter for the duration (an unusual item of foreplay it has to be said), but the minor discomfort was worth it. Now and again when her own functionality cut in she got a bit carried away, but although there were a few aches and pains afterwards no serious harm was done.

Twenty-one days. Twenty-one days of utter and excruciating boredom, waiting for the axe to fall. I'm not sure I've ever seen a day dawn with a greater sense of thankfulness. I may not see another, but at least there'll be an end of this long-drawn-out agony of waiting.

"And how is the patient today, hmm?" Enter Phlox, cheerful enough to give you toothache. Not that he's talking to me – he wouldn't waste the oxygen. Presumably it's standard bedside protocol as laid down in Doctoring For Dummies, or whatever cursed manual he picked his medicinal know-how out of. He wisely orders one of his lackeys to double-check the restraints before he approaches the bed; unfortunately for me, those who've dealt with me over the past twenty-one days (I think that figure will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life!) have been sedulously careful to unfasten them one at a time while I'm being tended, and to make sure the current one's fastened again before turning to the next.

He hums and grins and hums a bit more as he scrolls through the readouts and inspects the surgery site carefully. When he's finished he steps to the comm. panel. "Phlox to Commodore Tucker."

 _–Commodore?–_

 _"Tucker here."_

"Ah, Commodore, I'm pleased to report that the procedure on the prisoner appears to have been a complete success. You may wish to pass on the news that he's ready for use when required."

So far I've lain meekly on the bed, not even turning my gaze to look at him. But as the last six words sink in I can't prevent a single movement that makes the duranium fastenings of the restraints squeak ever so slightly.

"And conscious," adds Phlox, with relish.

 _"Wouldn't have wanted it any different,"_ says Commodore Tucker. 'Commodore', my Aunt Fanny. I bite my lip to stop the words escaping; they'd achieve nothing except betraying how badly I want to laugh at his rise in the world, and at what a mockery a title can be. I've never denied that he's an extremely intelligent man and an exceptional engineer, and the way he's pulled this station together was a startling display of his powers of organisation and staff control, but _Commodore!_ Spare me. And in a situation where I hold so very few cards, betraying my entirely legitimate amusement would not be a strong survival strategy.

"So are there any ... orders in place regarding his disposal?"

 _"Reckon they'll want him in their place. Nobody's told me any different, anyway. Get him down there and keep him secured. I don't want him able to move more'n an eyelash. You got that?"_

"Loud and clear, Commodore, loud and clear. And I'll be waiting in Sickbay when I'm required. Phlox out."

From the corner of my eye I see the gurney being brought over. More restraints. It takes quite heroic self-control not to unleash a burst of vituperation, but I'm thoroughly tamed; I don't even tense as the first of the lackeys puts a hand to the shackle on my right wrist. They can't get me on to that gurney without unfastening all of the straps that hold me to this bed that's been my prison since I was brought in here...

"Ah, I believe your parole would _not_ be acceptable, even were you minded to offer it." Phlox appears at my shoulder like a grinning Denobulan leprechaun, and before I can even flinch away the hypospray's at my neck. "And we won't be taking any unnecessary risks with anyone's safety on such a momentous occasion. I'm sure you'll understand."

I understand, all right. I understand that once again I'm conscious and inert, able to see and hear but neither speak nor act. I understand that all the restraints are flipped open and I'm utterly unable to move hand or foot, that I'm lifted like a landed salmon and transferred to the gurney. If anything were wanting to complete the effect of my being served up on a plate, it's that a soft white throw drapes the gurney like a tablecloth. I quite expect someone to lay a row of slices of lemon down my chest and stick a sprig of parsley in the end of my dick. Perhaps Chef Alice could supply a radish cut up to look like a waterlily or something, he's probably a deft chap at producing that sort of thing. It would just be the finishing touch seated artistically in my navel.

Even now, I suppose it's a compliment of sorts that the doctor's hell-brew isn't thought a sufficient guarantee of my harmlessness. My lower legs overhang the end of the gurney and are brought down to restraints waiting ready for my ankles. My wrists are secured at some part of the structure below my waist. At least they leave my head free, though as I can't move it anyway that's not much of a benefit.

Memory flashes across my brain: Harris, brought into Alpha's office similarly bound and helpless. I suppose this is what my deceased mate would have described as _piquant._ But at least we gave him the dignity of dying on his feet. I'm not pretending it was a nice death; after what he'd done to us, I wouldn't imagine he expected one. But if that particular fate's on the cards for me I can't imagine why it should have been necessary to perform surgery on me first.

Though to tell the truth, even if it is I'd prefer that to being condemned to live one more day on that bloody bio-bed. Some fates really are worse than death.

So. I'm finally 'ready for use', whatever that involves. Something extremely soft is draped over my lower parts, and I wish my lungs would oblige me with a hearty guffaw at the mental image of my modesty being preserved by a strategically positioned feather boa.

A couple of lackeys take up position to wheel me out of the room. "Goodbye for now!" calls Phlox chirpily, while his oversize Denobulan beam splits his ugly face like an overripe watermelon.

With care, you can break an individual finger bone in quite a few places. Over the past twenty-one days I've mentally designed machinery that will achieve the separation between fractures in microns. It's so ingenious I can't believe I hadn't thought of it before.

I'll leave it to you to guess who'll be the first test patient when I finally get it built.

They wheel me down the corridor and into a turbo-lift. By the most incredible coincidence, this is already occupied by 'Commodore' Tucker. Goodness me, how many people are smiling pleasantly at me this morning.

I must be in for a rare treat.


	5. Chapter 5

As I finally arrive at my destination my system is jumping with adrenaline, my mind almost equally divided between fear, relief and desperation. I want to live, I always have, but whatever's coming for me let it come _now_ – for god's sake let me be over with the waiting.

I suppose insofar as I'd expected anything, I'd expected some kind of laboratory. But this is no laboratory or anything like it; this is a State-room, done out like something I'd expect to see in one of Sato's palaces. It's exquisitely tasteful, insofar as I'm a judge of such things; the very little movement I still have (enough to let me blink and swallow, but not much else) allows me to move my eyes very slightly, so that my peripheral vision suggests one or two ornaments here and there whose utter simplicity is the most eloquent testimony to their costliness.

The gurney is pushed into the required position, the brakes are applied, and the lackeys bob their heads obsequiously and depart. They don't bob their heads at _me_ , I hasten to add. There are drapes of probably fabulously expensive material hanging from the ceiling, and if they're not bed-hangings you can call me a hors d'oeuvres and eat me.

Oops. Probably not the best choice of words, that. I control another impotent impulse to guffaw as I reflect that I should be surrounded by canapés and those little crackers with heaps of sturgeon caviar. But cancel the wine cooler, you drink red wine at room temperature and forgetting that that would offend Alice's sensibilities so horribly he'd probably feel obliged to exit via the nearest airlock.

(I hope someone ties those drapes out of the way. The bill for getting those clean would probably bankrupt the Empire...)

After a moment's silence I hear the rustle of fabric. My already thundering pulse finds it can still speed up just a notch more.

They say the Ancient Greeks believed their goddess Aphrodite rose from the sea at the island of Crete. Em rises into my vision looking lovelier than any goddess. She's wearing nothing but some drapery of cobwebby lace in which an occasional tiny jewel winks like a misty star. Her lips are flushed with arousal, and as they fasten on mine there's nothing I can do but respond. I can't move, but my brain furnishes me with all the memories and images I need, and my system's awash with raging desire so fast it takes even me by surprise.

I want her. I want her so badly I can hardly control my lust, and there's nothing left in me that can even ask _why_ as she mounts me; evidently whatever that stuff was in the hypospray isn't proof against the rush of testosterone. I feel as if every nerve in my body is firing off as she brings me to an almost instantaneous climax.

I'm still shuddering and gasping with the violence of it as she bends close to me. " _Perdóname, querido,_ " she whispers, and then she's moving, and someone else is taking her place.

Blue eyes, bluer than azure coins, stare down into my dazed amazement. Then there's a slow, deliberate movement, and flesh slides – somewhere–

It's not agonisingly painful, though it brings with it a wash of discomfort that spreads through my belly as Alpha begins to work me. And at last I know what has been transplanted into me, and what my purpose is. I have enough breath left to scream with grief, even as short heavy breaths I know all too well signal that the last act of the tragedy is upon me.

I may survive this. I may not. My survival is not the key issue.

The alpha male must breed. The alpha female is not dispensable.

There are always alternatives.


	6. Chapter 6

My treatment afterwards is exemplary.

I'm wheeled away and washed. If it mattered I could notice that a medi-scanner is passed rapidly across my belly and nods of cautious optimism are exchanged. There are different fluids in the bag that is hooked up to the ever-present drip beside me, and presently movement is generously allowed to return – within the usual limits, of course, which are not exactly large.

Even Phlox's air of the conjurer who has succeeded in producing an entire shuttlepod out of a very small hat passes almost unnoticed. He doesn't matter enough for it to register more than the faintest, briefest flicker of awareness. _Nothing_ matters. I'm so stunned that it feels as though every neuron in my brain has stopped firing. I don't think. I don't want to think. Thinking will be beyond bearing, and so I refuse thought.

This may be something to do with the chemicals now being flushed into me, though it doesn't feel as if it is. Maybe it's what's left of my self that pretends to have that much control, the only control that remains to me. I can choose not to feel. I can choose not to think. I can choose not to understand.

So I do.

Tucker visits, of course. He knows about the Procedure. Everyone knows, apparently. I'm the only one who doesn't. He grins down at me. "Kinda reminds me of an old classic they ran on Movie Night 'bout a month ago: 'The Devil Wears Prada'."

The lackeys think it's hilarious. By the way he watches me, he's expecting some kind of reaction. I don't acknowledge the gibe. Actually, I don't even understand it. I'm made of mist and cobwebs, and as I stare back into his face I think I even glimpse what looks strangely like an unwilling flicker of pity as he turns away.

Time was when even the suggestion of pity from Trip Tucker would have eaten at me like acid. Now only a vague puzzlement stirs the cobwebs before they settle again.

Hours pass. Days pass. I no longer count them. Even my grasp of the identities of those around me starts to drift.

One morning the odd-looking doctor scowls. I have apparently done something very bad. They fasten absorbent pads on my belly and I think someone may hit me, but nobody does. After a while the pads are no longer required, and there is some debate about whether the chemicals were too strong, or not strong enough, but anyway they argue themselves into some kind of decision and presumably a change is made. Then one day they wheel me out of Sickbay again. There is pleasure followed by pain, and I am not at all sure which of them makes me scream, but I am still screaming when I'm brought back to Sickbay and they sedate me quickly because this amount of agitation is not good for the Procedure.

The sedation and the chemicals and someone they refer to as The Patient do not agree with each other. There follows a period where I laugh and snarl and try to bite people, but nobody comes close enough to me for that, and I alternate between feeling intense loneliness for physical contact and intense dread of it. Now and again I glimpse a female with whom I associate 'testing functionality' – the phrase eddies out of the cobwebs and seems horribly significant for some reason – and it takes several sessions of hasty readjustments of the chemicals before they make the connection between my howling and her arrival.

After that I don't see her any more.

Hours pass. Days pass. I know this because different people look at the readings above my head and pass the medi-scanners across my belly, and talk about the Procedure. I begin to understand that the Procedure is very, very important. The odd-looking doctor certainly seems to think so. He becomes very tense as time goes on, and so do I, because if I do something wrong for a second time it's even more likely that someone will hit me and then afterwards there will be screaming again and it will be me doing it.

But time goes on, and a stealthy sense of hope begins to pervade Sickbay. People smile when they look down at my belly and this makes me very relieved, because if they are pleased they won't make me scream again, will they?

Will they?

I'm afraid of daring to hope. I try to breathe as slowly and shallowly as I can, so as not to upset the Procedure, but this becomes very difficult the day the two people whom I associate with the screaming come into Sickbay and look at the box on the wall above my head and then at my belly. I find my breath coming in terrified little gasps, and the doctor (I think he's a doctor) does something to the chemicals hanging beside my bed and then suddenly I feel calmer, though my heart is still kicking with fright.

Fortunately the people go away again quite quickly when the doctor tells them about it. For a while there is a kind of muted consternation around me in case all this may have affected the Procedure, but apparently it didn't. The doctor is definitely very happy about this, and I am able to relax again. One day I overhear him talking into a little box and he says The Patient is progressing excellently; I'm not sure who or what The Patient is, but if this chap's a doctor presumably he's trying to help The Patient get better, so that proves he's nice, doesn't it? Armed with this certainty, I smile hopefully at him next time he comes to look down at me. He looks so startled I feel guilty for not smiling at him oftener. To my surprise he pats me awkwardly on the shoulder, which feels so lovely/horrible/wonderful/awful/soothing/ terrifying that I hear myself making whimpering, choking sounds and water runs out of my eyes. This is evidently not good for The Procedure, for he makes more adjustments to the chemicals and soon I stop and everything is calm again. He's such a kind doctor that he doesn't pat me any more, which makes me very grateful to him. We don't want anything to go wrong with The Procedure, because that would mean ... that would ... Something stirs among the cobwebs and I shudder. I don't want to look there, and fortunately someone is at hand to look at the box above my bed and adjust the chemicals accordingly so I forget again.

=/\=

Time passes.

Presently I become aware of discomfort low in my body. It's not much, but I feel ... odd. Heavy. Especially when people move me to bathe me, when they seem to take extra trouble to lift and turn me very gently. They rub stuff into the back of me and put down thick pads of soft material for me to lie on, which feels very comfortable when they put me down again.

There's a butterfly in Sickbay. I'm surprised the doctor should allow such a thing, because it probably isn't very hygienic, but in the meantime it's company for me so I don't mention it to anyone. It sits on my belly. Obviously I can't see it, but I can feel it fluttering, which is a companionable sort of feeling.

Later on, I twig that the butterfly must be a pet of some kind. I mean, it's not possible that _nobody_ notices it, because it flaps away like a good 'un down there, and it's not just when there's only the two of us about. Now and again it arrives when somebody's looking at the box over my head, and everyone makes delighted noises. I'm sure I don't know why everyone should get so excited about a butterfly, but if they're happy, I'm happy. At least until the day when They reappear; I'd almost managed to forget about Them altogether, but one glance up into blue coins and everyone starts rushing about, colliding with each other in their haste to get the chemicals changed. Fortunately somebody manages to get it done and the butterfly stops screaming – hair-raising noise, that, I'd never have thought anything that small could make such a racket. After that the doctor shoos everyone out, and for a while the lights go down and the butterfly and I are left to tremble ourselves into quiet.


	7. Chapter 7

"I think we've gone as far as we dare with the current regimen."

I don't understand the words, of course, and he's not talking to me. The butterfly was very active this morning, and I don't know what they're feeding it but if it was up to me I'd put it on a bit of a diet. Still, it's nice to know one of us is getting plenty of exercise. Now and again I get the shadowy feeling that lying here isn't the most exciting thing in the world.

"It will allow him stress-free exercise and relieve the pressure," the doctor continues. The small group of acolytes around the bed nod earnestly, but one of them leans forward a little and asks whether the _transition_ might not be very risky?

The doctor nods judiciously, approving the foresight. "It must be managed carefully, very carefully. He's not capable of understanding about the solution, of course. He'll have to be conscious, but we must take it very gently."

Well, that sounds kind of him. Must be talking about that Patient chap they were on about ages ago. I'd have thought he'd be out of here by now, if I'd thought about him at all. Haven't heard much about the Procedure lately either.

Not sure I like the thought of that Transition though. Not if it's risky. I'm glad it's not happening to me.

"Will he remain conscious afterwards?" someone else asks.

This requires more consideration. "We postulate there's consciousness _of a sort_ ," comes the eventual reply. "Certainly there's brain activity. But it appears to be located in the ..." Blah, blah, he goes off into words that I don't understand and my already tenuous interest in the proceedings fades out. The only word I hear that lingers in my mind is _dreaming._

/\=

I'm not sure how many minutes have passed, but definitely not very many, when the slight jerk of the bed being moved wakes me from my usual half-doze.

Instantly my heart rushes into my throat. I haven't done anything wrong, I'm sure of it, though I've no idea what I did wrong last time.

Somebody adjusts the chemicals. I've a big box beside me now, that apparently they can use rather than the bag they had at first; the doctor explained about it to someone one day when I was awake, so I don't worry about it any more. (Not that I can see much of it, except when they move me. It has bright flickering lights of different colours and now and again I wish I could lie looking at them, because they'd be more interesting to look at than the ceiling all the time.) So I'm not as nervous as I somehow think I ought to be as I'm wheeled out of the door, with the big box still alongside me – it must have its own set of wheels, like my bed – though I worry in case we leave the butterfly behind. I've grown quite attached to it, and wouldn't like it to have to wander about the place looking for me.

They don't turn me in the direction that I'm afraid they might, though. We go the other way, but not very far, before they push me into another room. Here there are several people waiting whom I don't recognise, and lots of big interesting boxes with bright buttons and lights. There's one person there who seems strangely familiar, though, and I stare at him for as long as I can see him because something has happened to the side of his face and it must have been very painful, so I wonder if this is The Patient at last.

"All ready," he says shortly, moving out of my field of vision. "Let's get this done with."

The bed is moved to the middle of the room, and I feel it rising a bit as it goes, which is surprising but different. Then a number of people surround me and take hold of the bedding I'm lying on and lift me, which is so unexpected I feel the almost uncontrollable urge to giggle. Others are holding on tightly to the straps attached to my arms and legs, but they've had to unfasten the one around my head, and it hasn't been replaced.

After all this time it feels quite extraordinary to have nothing across my forehead and to be able to turn to look around me. It's so strange that for a moment I hesitate, but everything in this new room is so odd and fascinating that I can't resist the temptation to just steal a quick peek. And besides, I may finally be able to see my butterfly. I've passed so many hours inventing its colours, I want to see if any of my guesses are right.

Some of the people on one side seem to be doing something – I hear the squeak of wheels as if my bed is being wheeled away, though of course that's ridiculous, because I'll need to lie on it when they put me down again, won't I? Maybe someone ought to be keeping watch on where I'm looking, but they evidently aren't, because I laugh and raise my head to see if I can see my butterfly.

After that everything becomes very complicated and a lot of people are shouting, and everybody is trying very hard to keep me still and keep the bedding steady, while a sudden shrill wail of alarm from my box adds to the uproar. I get one arm free and the person holding the bedding on that side lets go suddenly, so that still screaming I slide down towards where my bed ought to be and my weight tears the straps out of everyone else's hands and I'm falling, falling onto the fl–

 _Water._ Except that it's not water, it's pink and warm and it tastes peculiar, and I flail around in it wrapped up in my bedding which has come into it with me, and I can't tell which is the right way up, which is terrifying as my head's under the water and I didn't take a very deep breath when I fell in. I fight my bedding and I fight the water and my fists and feet bang against the sides, but my arms and legs are so weak I can't break anything or tear anything, and the air is going out of my mouth and nose as I thrash and scream. Vaguely I can still hear shouting, but it's going further and further away behind the buzzing in my ears. All my air is gone and the pain in my chest is so great I have to breathe, but there's nothing but pink water and I'm going to drowndrowndrowndrow–

The pink water rushes into my nose, my mouth, my throat; I try to swallow it, to drink it, but it goes into my lungs and the shock of the pressure is so great I arch like a bow, waiting for the darkness to come.

But it doesn't.

Instead, calm comes.

The bedding loosens its malevolent, all-encompassing grip of my body. I float, still, submerged, wondering, feeling the cautious tugs from above detach it from around me and drag it up.

Finally it's gone. I'm free. The only important thing that still seems to be attached to me is the tube that leads from my hand, though I'm vaguely aware that there are other tubes that go elsewhere. This is the one that connects me to my box, and by the way that I drift, almost comatose, as hands cautiously reach down and unfasten the straps around my wrists and ankles, the lights on the box must be winking very busily indeed.

There was something that frightened me, but I don't remember what it was. I'm floating like a fish, and even the slightest movement sends me wafting through the pink water so that I bump against the sides and drift away again. This amuses me for a while, but soon I become tired. It is very hard work to move my arms and legs again after so long, and feels very strange.

Idly I move myself to the top of the pink water, where once again I bump gently to a halt. There is a glass cover, which fits absolutely neatly except where there are little holes for the cables to pass through. There is no air-space; it's filled to the brim with pink water. This should worry me, but it doesn't, because I still appear to be breathing, however unlikely this may be. It takes a bit of effort, but it works.

I can see people beyond. They are _still_ shouting; I can hear their voices distantly, and as I peep anxiously through the glass, trying to understand what everyone is so upset about, I see the doctor's face has blown up like a balloon – if he was looking at me this would be terrifying, but luckily he is staring at someone else. Everyone seems to be yelling and gesticulating. I hope they are not angry with me, but I am becoming too tired to care. I stop looking. I stop listening. I turn over, and my body drifts slowly into a gentle curve as it sinks to the bottom of the tank.

I wait for the dreaming.


	8. Chapter 8

_It is_ Enterprise _._

 _It is_ Enterprise _and yet it is not_ Enterprise _, for the uniforms are wrong. This is the first thing I notice, for the women are dressed exactly the same as the men are. It seems so strange to see a woman without her midriff exposed that I pause as she draws level with me; and stranger still, instead of flinching or even jerking to a halt, she simply smiles at me and walks past, as though she is not afraid of me in the least. I turn and look after her, and she does not look back nervously or hurry away. I do not know what to make of it at all._

 _The Mess Hall. There are not many people there, and none of those who are seem to pay any attention to my arrival. Except one: Sergeant Mayweather, who is seated in front of a chess board at one of the tables, and looks up and waves me over. His smile is so bright it is almost unrecognisable. "Hey, Lieutenant!" he calls. "I'm going to beat you tonight. I swear, tonight it's going to happen. I feel lucky."_

 _I'm not sure who he's addressing as Lieutenant, but it's been so long since I played a game of chess that I decline to remind him that my rank aboard_ Enterprise _is that of Major. Instead I drop into the chair opposite him and lay out my pieces. A couple of the other diners have heard his braggadocio and quips fly thick and fast; someone even claims to have seen a pink pig fly past the viewing port. Mayweather accepts them all with unfailing good nature, beaming as he sets the auto-timer for the game. His whole mien is so utterly at odds with the sullen glower with which he's always confronted me across the board before now that I have difficulty in believing it's actually the same person at all._

 _At any rate, his chess skills aren't significantly different, except perhaps that this smiling version plays with a little more dash and a little less calculation – almost as if he's playing for fun. He doesn't beat me and he doesn't care in the least; on the contrary, when I finally tap the base of his king with my rook and applause bursts from those who've gathered to watch and deride the crash of his hopes, he smiles so hugely that you'd think he'd won a tournament final, and reaches across to shake hands and congratulate me._

 _"I had you worried at one point, though, admit it!" he laughs._

 _"Definitely," I reply. "I was worried you weren't even going to last ten minutes."_

 _I don't think I've ever heard people laugh like that before at something I've said. Not as though it was genuinely funny, as opposed to because they were too scared not to._

 _It's at this point it occurs to me that I'm dreaming. That this is all something I've read about somewhere, but that I'm living it as though it's actually me._

 _This idea is so interesting that I decide to carry on and see what else happens to me. I drink some tea and eat a few crackers topped with cheese, and am just about to stand up when someone puts down a plate in front of me. It's a piece of cake, sponge cake with a circle of pineapple stuck in the top and a glistening cherry stuck in the middle of it. "Don't tell me I never do anything for you, Lieutenant." Sato drops a spoon and fork beside the plate, and grins down at me. "That was the last piece, and Anna was just making a bee-line for it."_

 _"You saved her from getting put on report," I say, trying not to make it obvious that I'm looking around a bit wildly to see who Anna may be. Fortunately an attractive woman by the dessert cabinet is pulling a face at Sato, and I realise she's referring to that sour-faced bitch Hess whom Tucker's training up. Hess puts a piece of carrot cake on her tray instead and walks away with a pretend flounce, grinning._

 _"Thank you." I glance up at Sato a bit uncertainly._

 _She smiles down at me and actually winks. "My pleasure, Malcolm." Then she walks on with her own tray and sits down beside Hess, and within moments the two of them are talking and_ _laughing _\- a fact that's remarkable in itself, as the two of them heartily despise each other, but no trace of that is apparent here_. Evidently no malice is borne over the last piece of pineapple cake, which I eat quickly in case the dream goes away, because it tastes absolutely delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I'm not sure even Alice could make a better one._

 _Surreptitiously I watch the people around me. They are not all laughing; some look serious – de la Haye sets out my abandoned chess pieces and takes on the ever-hopeful Mayweather, and McKenna sits to one side, absorbed in the contents of a PADD. But nevertheless, there is a subtle difference to their faces that it takes me a while of silent study to identify._

 _They are not afraid._

 _When the pineapple cake is all eaten, even the crumbs (waste is discouraged in the Empire, with the financial drain of the constant war effort, but even if it wasn't I'd still have eaten the lot), I wonder what to do next. I could go to look at the Armoury, but I might meet myself there, and then I don't know what either of us would do about it. More importantly still, I might meet someone else there, the memory of whom gives me a sudden strong shudder._

 _In seconds I feel calm again, though I take advantage of the moment to remind myself not on any account to go down to G Deck. That would be a Very Bad Thing, though I'm not sure why, and I will not do it._

 _I can go to my quarters instead. There's always a chance of my being there as well, but if the Alpha Shift are eating and relaxing then something tells me I'm more likely to be in the gymnasium._

 _I have a very bad moment when I leave the Mess Hall. I almost collide with Captain Archer, who is apparently not dead. This is extremely surprising, since we recently came to the conclusion it was no longer either expedient or necessary to keep him alive, but here indeed he is, walking his ever-present dog. The dog is almost as much of a surprise as Archer himself, because instead of the leashed Rottweiler who normally glowers at every passer-by as though planning where to sink its teeth into them, it's a small and cheerful beagle who runs up to me wagging his tail as if he's absolutely delighted to see me. Almost before I realise what I'm doing, I bend and pat his head awkwardly before straightening up to face the captain._

 _This is even more unnerving than all the rest of them put together. The man actually smiles at me, and though I recognise the ever-present weight of responsibility in his face, the grooves of bad temper and suspicion are simply not there. In fact, he appears so terminally genial that in the general way of things I'd suspect him of being mentally deficient in some way, but there's a quick intelligence in the hazel eyes that gives the lie to that idea._

 _"Don't forget it's Movie Night tonight, Malcolm," he says, smiling. "After the way you saw off that Kreetassan pirate vessel today, I told Trip to make sure he finds something with lots of explosions for you."_

 _"Wouldn't miss it for the world, sir," I respond, since he evidently expects me to say something in reply._

 _"I'll see you there." And off he wanders, with the beagle happily trotting on ahead, while I stare after the two of them in perplexity._

 _We had Movie Night on our own_ Enterprise _, of course – the real one. It was an excellent opportunity for showing propaganda films, and attendance was mandatory, especially for the aliens on board. Normally if Tucker was ordered to produce something with 'lots of explosions' I'd expect to watch a particularly successful strike on a rebel base, complete with a spectacular casualty list, but something tells me that this is not what is likely to feature tonight._

 _The theme is repeated over and over again as I make my way slowly to my quarters. Everyone I meet either smiles at me or gives a nod of what seems to be genuine respect._

 _It's mystifying. How can people respect me if they're not afraid of me?_

 _And yet–_

 _I turn a corner, and there she is. Such a wave of fear passes through me that I actually feel the tickle of something in my right wrist, making me calm again._

 _"I heard about the pirates,_ Patrón _," she says, with a delighted smile that makes her look quite astonishingly lovely – though in an utterly different way to any I've ever seen, even when we were shagging to celebrate the final destruction of the resistance on Rigel II. "_ Dios mío _, they will think again before they take on another Starfleet ship!"_

 _I mutter something self-effacing. I can't in the least understand why everyone seems to think that allowing an enemy ship to get away from a hostile encounter without being blasted to smithereens is something I should be congratulated on; if I'd done the logical thing and pulverised the bloody pirates there and then there'd be no possibility at all of them thinking about taking on another Starfleet ship._

 _Ever._

 _'Starfleet' ... not 'Imperial'. Once again the suggestion drifts through my mind that this is all something I read about once, but it seems so real, so_ possible _..._

 _"The Kreetassan government has thanked us for our intervention," a cool voice says from behind us. If I weren't so relaxed I'd probably spin on the spot, but instead I just turn and look at T'Pol. Far from being half-naked and feral, she's dignified and calm, in a light blue catsuit that pays tasteful tribute to her lovely figure rather than parading it; her hair is cut short, right up to the nape of her neck, and is as immaculately neat as all the rest of her. "They are despatching a patrol to the area, and thanks to the information you gathered, they are confident that the pirates may be tracked down and brought to justice. Well done, Lieutenant."_

 _She doesn't linger, but walks on, giving me a chance to snatch an unprofessional and admiring glance at her arse, which the catsuit displays to perfection. Em, of course, catches me at it and gives me a conspiratorial grin before she too walks away. Her hair is braided up, which usually means she's going out on the prowl and doesn't want to risk a stray strand of it spoiling her aim, but here it gives her an air of brisk professionalism that in no way detracts from the fact that she has a perfectly beautiful face. I'm not at all surprised that Maj–_

 _The tickle is stronger this time. G Deck. Must not go onto G Deck._

 _She doesn't linger. She covers the Gamma Shift, so it's probably about her time for bed. My mind swerves away from the thought that she may visit G Deck, and a third tickle makes me so relaxed I feel for a moment as though I'm sleepwalking._

 _My quarters._

 _I feel a brief twist of anxiety in case I may be there already, but my brief soft knock on the door receives no reply, and even I wouldn't be so rude as to not answer myself at the door. My code doesn't work, but the security override does, and so I enter and stand looking at my own room as though I've never seen it before._

 _It's not that much different. I can't stand clutter, and the bed is neatly made, the chair tucked in at the desk. There's a notice board on the wall, though there's not much on it, and the only other item of decoration is a lithograph of an old wooden-hulled sailing ship. The small plaque set into the frame just says 'HMS Victory', which is puzzling; I'd have thought it should have been ISS, even then..._

 _One thing that draws my attention, though, is the row of books on a shelf. Real books, very old some of them; the sort of thing the Empire did away with years ago, as being far too useful a tool for secret sedition. I look through them curiously, finding them well-read but well cared for. The typefaces seem strange to the eye, not being the standard PADD type, but the feeling of an actual book in my hand feels oddly pleasant._

 _The sound of the chime startles me so much I almost drop 'British Naval Battles', but I save it at the last second and replace it carefully on the shelf. "Come in," I say cautiously._

 _The last time I saw this man it looked as though half of his face had been melted by radiation and the other half carved out of granite. Now I see it relaxed and handsome, and he walks into my cabin, swings out the desk chair and sits down in it as though utterly sure of his welcome. He has visited often, so often that he does not even think of it as he drops a couple of bottles onto the table. "For later," he says cheerfully. "We'll drink to those damned pirates you chased away."_

 _"Drinking to_ pirates? _" I echo incredulously._

 _"Yeah. Flyin' straight into the long arm of the law, thanks to Mister Ultra-Cool Tactical Officer Reed." He chortles up at me and pretends to shoot an imaginary pirate with his thumb and two fingers as a phase pistol._

 _Tucker and I are_ friends! _This is such a mind-numbing realisation that I can hardly grasp it. Rather than grudging the praise I have apparently earned, he is as delighted by my 'success' as if it was his own._

 _The awkward thing now is that I have really no idea how to behave. Never having had a friend in my life, I simply haven't a clue how I'm supposed to respond to this kind of situation. Luckily, he seems to notice nothing unusual in my tongue-tied state, but reminds me that Movie Night starts in an hour and I'm not to be late because he's picked something off the database specially for me. "At least we'll have room to spread out now," he adds gaily. "Remember when we had all those damn MACOs aboard and you couldn't hardly swing a cat for hittin' one of 'em?" He winks broadly. "Not that you'll be wishin' 'em back again – specially your pal Hayes."_

 _"Not in the least." My throat has tightened up so badly that it's as much as I can do to force the words out. For all that I clutch at the information that **he** is no longer aboard, still the name brings with it a wash of suffocating fear. There's something – something terrible–_

 _I feel the familiar tickle at my wrist and the fear seeps away. Something that might be my elbow brushes against the floor of the tank, and I roll lazily. I am no longer heavy, no longer uncomfortable. On the contrary, I am sleepy and content._

 _I will go back to the dreaming._

 _It was pleasant there._


	9. Chapter 9

I have no idea how much time has passed when one day I wake to find many more people than usual staring in at me through the glass.

I've been a goldfish for so long that I hardly notice the people who come and go every day, looking in at me. They seem happy enough just to look, and I'm happy enough to ignore them. Now and again they bring me gently right to the top, where the glass is unaccountably missing, and rub some kind of nice-smelling stuff into my skin; I don't know why they do this, but it feels good, and they make sure I don't feel afraid, so that's just part of my routine. I spend most of the time dozing or dreaming, and the dreams are so pleasant that I never want to leave them. I know so much about life in that other _Enterprise_ now, about the life that not-me lives there. Of course it's not real, it never could be real, but in my few periods of dim reflection, how much I wish it was. How I wish that there was such comradeship, such trust, such friendship. How I wish that I could work and talk and even laugh with people I respect.

How I wish it was real.

But my existence is so vague now that I only remember intermittently that it isn't, and those periods don't seem to consist of anything much – just propelling myself idly around the tank, and feeling the slight bump as I bounce off the sides. I seem to have plenty of room, and if the tubes start to get wrapped around me and bothersome someone will always lean in and untangle me. The tank's not very deep, so they can reach me without actually having to get in, but it's long enough for me to kick off one end and drift a few seconds before I reach the other, and I can turn around again easily enough, though lately I've found it oddly and increasingly awkward, as though my body's become somewhat ungainly for some reason. Definitely I have periods of strange discomfort, almost as though my internal organs have acquired a mysterious life of their own, and on the odd occasion when I glance downwards I do seem to be somewhat on the large size, though without exception a wash of drowsiness prevents me from taking too much notice. So life's pretty comfortable, on the whole. Not that I have any inclination to complain ... that would take far too much effort.

Today, however, the slow routine is broken. The sight of all those faces stirs a vague disquiet, though none of them is familiar enough to bring the muffled sound of the alarm-wail from my box. Twos and threes are normal, but there must be many more than two or three, and they are all looking at me very hard, with something more than the usual almost passing interest.

The strange doctor is among them. Although I know he must be a very nice person, something about his expression makes me shiver, and it's with a slightly stronger movement than usual that I push off the glass wall opposite him and turn away.

But the pink pressure all around me seems different, and after a moment it dawns on me that it's growing less. The not-water is slowly and silently draining out of the tank, and for the first time I discover that even when I'm right at the bottom of it, there's not enough left to cover me. And it goes on sinking, uncovering me to a world that now seems cold and frighteningly intangible.

After so long of being practically weightless, the return of gravity would naturally be exhausting. My languid progresses around the tank have afforded my muscles some activity, with the resistance of the pinkness helping to increase the effort required, but I'd have had to swim around an Olympic swimming pool like a barracuda every day to have kept up the muscle tone that would cope with this sudden re-emergence into the grip of normal gravity.

And if the weight weren't enough, I soon find that I'm running out of pink to breathe in. I press my face into the last few centimetres, and thrash desperately as I feel hands gripping me.

Not for long, of course; the familiar wash of tranquillity stills me. But all the same, I can't stop myself gasping frantically as I'm lifted and alien air clasps my face, invading my mouth and nose as the pink runs out of me.

At this point most of the world goes away. There are mercifully vague impressions of being carried and lowered again, and of things being done to my face and throat while many hands hold me still. But when the world begins to eddy back to me again there is the strange, dry feeling of air hushing in and out of my lungs, and blearily I remember that there was a time when this was quite normal.

 _Normal_ , however, is not a word that even my brain of congealed cotton wool can apply to the absolutely crushing weight of my body. Wisps of memory tell of whales dying on beaches, suffocated by the pressure of their own mass, and I am a whale, stranded and helpless, stupefied by my own inability to do more than rock the appalling prison in which I suddenly find myself. My own bones are the bars, and I am trapped inside them. The concept is so horrible that I struggle to get my brain around it; surely my thoughts were not always this slow, this difficult?

I miss the pink. I miss its pressure, its warmth. Even though I am breathing air again, and it is growing easier, the lack of it around me is like the chill of space, and the people who surround me are no comfort. Very quickly they fasten straps to my wrists and ankles again (I had forgotten those), and although the surface on which they lay me is soft enough, I remember the sensation of being unable to move. As the strap settles on my forehead again, it is like waking from a dream into a nightmare.

Their voices are loud. After so long of hearing them only distantly, they batter on my eardrums.

"The medication will have to be reduced gradually," the doctor says. "We don't know if a sudden withdrawal would be too stressful."

"There haven't been any contraindications with regard to development?" somebody asks.

"None whatsoever." His voice is fat with confidence. "In human terms, we're approaching the midpoint of the third trimester. I'm ready to administer all the additional hormones. There should be no problem at all."

"And what about the..." Another person starts to ask, but is instantly glared into silence by all the faces that whip in his direction.

" _Everything_ has been taken into consideration," the doctor says bitingly. "There will be no danger whatsoever. I have orders to intervene _immediately_ if there is the slightest sign of a problem."

The enquirer retires, crushed. Everyone nods, satisfied.

And they all smile down at me.


	10. Chapter 10

The chemicals are withdrawn.

Presumably something is done to mitigate the withdrawal effects, because when it finally dawns on me how stoned I've been for the past however-long I can only marvel that I'm not enjoying a constant procession of hallucinations dancing across the ceiling. A steady stream of undulating Denobulan doctors maybe, clad in hula skirts and outsize leis.

...Or perhaps not. There's a limit to what a sick man's brain can be asked to bear.

It's not pleasant, mentally or physically. Apart from the growing burden pressing on my internal organs, there are periods when my very bones ache and my head feels as if it's going to collapse inward on itself like a black hole. But each time thought struggles back out of that colossal gravity there's more of it, and slowly I fit together the pieces of what has been done to me.

There's no merciful tickle at my wrist now. Not that I'd want it; on the contrary. Even in the moment when the memory of what I saw when I craned up to see the 'butterfly' comes crashing back to me in all its horror, I don't turn away from it. I replay it, analysing it coldly while the picture passes before me frame by frame.

I've never had any reason to get involved with pregnant women. They're a nuisance and a liability, and anyone on a starship who was stupid enough to evade the contraception regimen and get their belly filled could expect to be got rid of in short order (unless they were particularly vital to the ship, in which case they got a termination followed by a demotion). So my experience of the business end of the mechanics of human reproduction's lamentably thin, but I seem to remember from sex-ed classes at school that pregnancy lasts about nine months.

'Midpoint of the third trimester', Phlox said. That makes me...

...Just about eight months pregnant.

I face the fact stonily. In my belly the product of all this Machiavellian medicine squirms vigorously, while the latest acolyte runs a medical tricorder across it and beams at the readings. One thing I do remember is that the woman's pelvis is broader so that a baby can sit in it comfortably. For possibly the first time in my life I feel bitter satisfaction at the fact that for a bloke I've always been on the small side. The narrow bones of my pelvis must feel like a concrete strait-jacket.

 _Good!_

No doubt the pious would throw up their hands in horror if they could read what's in my mind as I stare at the ceiling. But then it's not like I ever set out to take up a career as an incubator. Nobody _asked_ me if I wanted to be turned into some kind of hermaphrodite freak to hatch out a horror. At a guess, nobody will even give a shit if I don't survive the experience. So you'll have to forgive me if I don't turn into a cooing ball of mush at the thought that I'm having a baby, because even apart from the minor personal inconvenience to myself, I can guess exactly where this is going. Actually I don't even have to guess; now and again back in the day _breeding_ was mentioned. I remember how thoughtful Alpha looked once at the idea that introducing our own genes into the population might be more efficient than putting subjects through what had been done to us...

The baby is valuable in and of itself, of course. I strenuously doubt whether Sato has the faintest idea of its existence, because there can only be one queen bee in a hive. Up till now Em's remained quiescent, but as soon as she has a child she'll be absolutely deadly; Sato's survival will probably be measurable in hours. If not minutes.

But its greatest value will lie in its genetic makeup. I don't know what happened to Alpha, I've never asked because I was quite sure he wouldn't tell me. But if his genetic material is still compatible with an ordinary human's (and it seems that it is, unless Phlox did some tinkering with the zygote before it was injected into me) then this baby is an almost limitless source of gametes ...

 _But why use_ me? Even as I castigate myself savagely for my own weakness, part of me wails it in desolate reproach. _Couldn't they have used someone else?_ Anyone _else?_

 _Why_ not _you?_ The answer comes with the brutal cold of interstellar space. _You were a potential threat. What if the time came when_ you _thought about reproducing? So they could have killed you – but instead they made you useful._

Back on Earth, a there's a type of wasp that stings and paralyses a spider, into which it lays an egg before dragging the wretched victim away to bury it alive as a living larder for the growing larva inside it. My chances of survival may be fractionally better than that spider's, though the experience is analogous in many ways. But instead of producing a single wasp, I have been recruited to produce the first of a whole new generation.

The Army of the Dispossessed was a terrifying resource when it was finally moulded into a weapon. Imagine that multiplied a hundred, a thousand times; cloned, even, and introduced into the human gene pool through a thousand routes.

Bonny, bouncing, blue-eyed babies, obedient killers from the cradle...

Well. There's nothing I can do about it from here. While my reasoning processes were away with the fairies I was allowed a careful measure of freedom, but now I've been allowed to have them back my captors are well aware of the threat I pose. My silence is no reassurance, nor should it be, for all that I hope against hope that sooner or later someone, somewhere, is going to make a single tiny slip.

Because if they don't, my time is running short. My male body was never designed to cope with the stresses and strains of childbirth, even when I was fully fit, and although the uterus that Phlox transplanted into me seems to have coped well enough, I don't know how well it's all tied together when it comes to finally expelling the brat. He's certainly not bothering to calm my maternal qualms on that score, not that I'd believe the slimy shite if he said it'd slip out as easily as a spent dick. Whether he's aware of this or whether he just can't be arsed or whether it's all part of the payback to keep me wondering is moot. I don't even waste the effort of hoping for it.

Strangely enough, though, when sheer boredom finally sends me to sleep, the dreams come back – the dreams that I had in the fish-tank. I walk down the corridors I recognise, interacting with familiar strangers in a way that seems so uncannily natural that every waking plunges me into a fresh welter of disappointment and rage. In particular my easy camaraderie with one person in particular tears me open; she's my subordinate, my deputy, but she calls me her _patrón_ and we talk as people do who have a deep mutual regard and unswerving trust in one another.

Trust. I'd never have believed that I had such a thing in anyone, but too late I realise that I slid into the trap almost without knowing. And when its jaws closed on me, I found the pain of betrayal more than I could bear – a discovery that makes me want to writhe with humiliation and fury at my own idiotic naïveté. What the fuck had I thought I was _doing_ , falling in love!

And this is where it's led me. Unless events intervene, I have two prospective fates: to die giving birth to a nightmare, or to survive it and live on as the one-size-shags-all sex toy of the two people I...

Self-pity has never been my forte. I've no time for people who wallow in their own misfortune and I certainly wouldn't number myself among them; time spent repining is time that could have been so much better spent in planning revenge. But for all my determination to conquer the grief I've always seen as a sign of weakness, I feel as though the core of me that used to be fire has turned to ice. Not that I'm not perfectly capable of killing still; it's just an utterly different feeling inside me, where an arctic wind blows across the featureless wasteland.

Maybe it's better that way. Cold makes one numb. When one is numb, one cannot feel. One can think without the taint of emotion. One can plan with a clear head. One does not feel pain. Or regret.

=/\=

So time passes; once again endless, featureless time, though I no longer bother to count it.

Nobody makes mistakes. Alpha is in control, and his will pervades Sickbay, just as it probably pervades the entire station. If the inhabitants thereof weren't terrified of me they'd certainly be terrified of him, and so they should be. Although naturally somewhat disappointed by the religious fervour with which his commands are followed, I'm certainly not surprised.

But machinery is incapable of feeling self-preservatory terror, and it's a machine that gives me the first – possibly the only – break in the routine.

I'm drowsing, because I'm bored and because my body has had enough sleep for the time being and because I'm stuck on a particular refinement for my wonderful machine for breaking patients' finger-bones into micron-sized shards. People come and go all the time, and I take no notice of them, apart from making a note of those who will follow Phlox into the prototype when I get it set up; there are certain members of the laboratory staff who feel entitled to take liberties, and that's another of my mottoes, _Take what you want, says Reed. And then pay for it._ (I've a notion it's not entirely original, but what the hell, _I_ like it, and that's what counts.)

So, someone's taking notes and looking at the reading on the monitor above my head, and I'm not taking any notice, when suddenly this alarm goes off.

Obviously it's getting to the point now when everyone's on tiptoe waiting for The Start, so people rush in from all directions and even I sit up and take notice – not literally of course, because I'm still shackled hand and foot, but you know what I mean. But I could have told them that it wasn't The Start, because to the best of my knowledge I should get some kind of warning. If nothing else, I believe there's something about thinking you've pissed yourself, and presumably things would start being damned uncomfortable. Now, I'll admit that now I'm this bloated, discomfort has become my ground state, but I suspect that if I were about to become a doting dad (or something along those lines) there would be some noticeable increase.

Which there isn't.

People flap and twitter and look at the readouts and at the monitor, and glare at me like it was all something I organised just to pass the time and be an arse.

Chance would be a fine thing, say I. Well, I _don't_ say, because I don't talk, but I think it.

Eventually they work it out between them that the machine's throwing a wobbly. That's not something they want to have happening at such a critical juncture in The Procedure, now is it, so an urgent call is put out for the Head Hobgoblin himself. No less a personage than Commodore Tucker will suffice to check a faulty relay in the wondrous artefact constantly monitoring the welfare of this modern-day Damien whom I am shortly to have the privilege of bringing into the world.

Oh, ecstasy.

Still glaring reproachfully at me like it's _my_ bloody fault the machine's going off on one, everyone disperses again, leaving me to my blissful anticipation.

Tucker must have been at some distance, because it's about half an hour before he strides into Sickbay. He hasn't been in since the day I was dunked into the fishpond, as far as I know, and I don't suppose he's missed me any more than I've missed him.

Still, even though there can hardly be any doubt that he knows full well what was going on, I suppose seeing it in the flesh must come as a bit of a shock. I know from the sound of the booted feet that it's not one of the medical team who's come in, and I hear his stride faltering just fractionally.

But business is business, and surrounded by a flotilla of anxiously quacking medical staff he comes to check the machine. It's still squawking intermittently, and I'm getting a bit tired of the noise by now. I hope he'll sort it out and then bugger off without pausing to exchange sweet nothings; I've got other things to think about right now than listening to Tucker's vivacious wit getting its annual airing at my expense.

Ever the charmer, he dispenses a series of snarls that send his accompanying flotilla scattering in all directions, and then bends to start running diagnostics. He doesn't say anything to me and I'm thankful for small mercies. With any luck he'll shut the damn thing up in a couple of seconds and fuck off out again.

The seconds elapse. The machine keeps beeping. I lose track of where I was in trying to iron out that exasperating flaw in my ingenious patented digit-shatterer, and scowl at the ceiling. I've got the effective head of the entire Empire's engineering sector squatting beside me and here am I stuck with a problem he could probably sort out in five minutes flat if he put his mind to it.

Wonder if I should mention it, just while he's here?

Perhaps not.

He has various parts of the machinery disembowelled and is breathing exasperation. Finally he comes to the conclusion that he needs to check something in the monitor above me, and stands up to lean across. As he does so, he glances down at me. I have no idea why.

After all this time it's almost a physical shock to have someone meet my eyes, as though I'm a person rather than a function – even if I'm a person he loathes.

I can't see anyone else in my necessarily limited field of vision. I have time for three words, and they'd better be good ones; unfortunately 'Get me out of this' has two too many, and besides, I wouldn't give him that much of a laugh.

They're out before I even know what they are, breathed so low I'm not even sure he'll hear them. "End of humanity."

"What was that?" asks one of the doctors sharply.

Tucker's eyes are bright blue. His ruined face twists with derision. "Pity – for _you?"_ And he spits before getting back on with the work he's been called here to do.

My rediscovery of the noble art of communication causes a small stir of consternation. Even Phlox is summoned to hear about it, and evidently feels brave enough to attempt to interrogate the recipient.

He's picked the wrong one in Tucker. The engineer just pauses and glowers. "Sure he spoke to me. He said 'Have some pity.'" A huff of a laugh. "Fine thing for _that_ little bastard to be talkin' about pity. I'm just surprised he knows what the word means."

There's a nervous little titter from those listening. Phlox stares down at me and then turns to someone else. "Was that what you heard?"

I hold my breath.

"It – may have been, Doctor. The – the – he spoke very quietly. But it sounded like that."

For the second time in five minutes I have someone looking directly at me. But there never was a time when Phlox could meet my eyes for long, and even now I'm at this nadir of my fortunes I see a nervous twitch run across his face as I stare coldly back at him.

I'm not going to say anything and he knows it. And with me in this 'delicate condition' there's no way he'd dare use any, shall we say 'forceful' means of encouraging me to co-operate. So that leaves him the option of challenging Tucker's version of events; and Commodore Tucker must be a very powerful chap these days, in charge of the Jupiter Station and I daresay what else beside by now, given the scale of his success with it. So if I were Phlox I'd just nod and accept it.

And this is indeed what he does, though he covers his minor defeat by demanding truculently whether the machine will take long to fix – given the fact that it's still yelping intermittently, it obviously isn't fixed yet.

"You want it fixed or botched?" Tucker asks with a sneer. "I can shut it up straight away or I can make sure it stays shuts up till it's actually wanted. Wouldn't do for Sleeping Beauty here to go into labour and nobody notices till it's too late, would it?"

Well, obviously that's absolutely the last thing Phlox or anyone else wants to happen. Now they've all invested this much time and effort into producing Damien, even I shudder to think what Alpha would do to every man jack of the team who allowed something to happen to it. So Phlox hurriedly opts for the most sensible option of keeping his insides where they are, and nods chastened approval of the modifications Tucker tells him need to be made to the machinery to make it 'five hundred per cent foolproof'.

(Presumably the fool he's alluding to doesn't get the fact that you can't have more than one hundred per cent of anything, but there you go, logic has certainly deserted that particular expression since it was coined.)

The modifications require parts that need to be fetched, so Tucker departs to fetch them. Since his neck will also be on the line for any failure, I'm not in the least surprised that he goes for them himself rather than entrust the task to an underling. In about ten minutes he returns with them, and permits Phlox to examine them minutely in case anything toxic or explosive or similarly unamiable has been inserted into them; obviously I can't see this happening, but I hear the flat, sarcastic, Floridian drawl that asks if he'd like to jump up and down on them too, just to make sure they're not broken.

This kind offer is not taken up of course, but though as Tucker sets about replacing parts of the machinery he embarks on a completely unnecessary explanation of what he's doing, it's couched in so much jargon that I'm fairly certain he loses Phlox after the first half-dozen words. When the good doctor and I were co-operating in the construction of the Agony Booth, our spheres of expertise were very clearly separated: he was the biologist and I was the engineer. When we met in the middle, as obviously we had to do on a fairly regular basis, we each had to exercise some care to ensure the other understood what were sometimes quite specialist concepts. Only by 'dumbing stuff down' for the other's benefit could we ensure that we were speaking the same language, and irksome as it was for me (and probably for him too), there was no way around it.

Vanity – especially as they're surrounded by his acolytes, who presumably think the sun shines out of his arse – prevents Phlox from admitting he's hopelessly adrift on this sea of technological terms. I, on the other hand, am no slouch in the engineering department. True, my specialist areas were explosives and weaponry, but despite the fact that Tucker's so voluble that even I have to scramble to keep up, I _can_ make sense of what he's saying.

Well. That's perhaps the wrong way of putting it. I can't exactly 'make sense' of what he's saying, because some of it doesn't actually make any sense at all to start with. It's the most extraordinarily fluent gibberish.

But as a Security specialist I'm expert at picking up buried code, and almost at once I realise that the technobabble spewing from our Head of Engineering isn't actually aimed at Phlox at all.

It's aimed at me.

From the moment he lied about what I'd actually said to him, I've been torn between hope that he was keeping himself out of trouble by not getting even remotely involved in speculation about what this charming little project was aimed at, and fear that he was simply waiting to report my treasonous announcement to Alpha himself. There was also, of course, the possibility that he really had misheard what I'd said. After all, I couldn't see if anyone was close by and therefore had to speak so fast and quietly I was risking him not hearing me properly, if indeed he heard me at all; if he didn't hear what I was saying the first time he certainly wouldn't have the option of asking me to repeat myself.

If he's reported me to Alpha, then there probably won't be any immediate repercussions. After all, I'm in a 'delicate condition', and the welfare of the thing in my belly is the trump card, protecting me from practically anything. But once it's born, then my outlook could be very, very different.

He still could be playing a double game, of course. He could have reported to the authorities, received his orders, and be now embarking on paying out the rope for me to hang myself a dozen times over.

Trust Tucker? Me? Just put your head back on the right way round, will you? I'm through trusting anyone.

But though the pieces of information I pick up are scattered and sparse, and he leaves afterwards with a jeered 'Enjoy the rest of your life – what there is of it!' hurled in my direction, he's said enough to leave me very, very thoughtful.

Now, where do we go from here?


	11. Chapter 11

Ever the disobliging sort, I wait till about nine in the evening before I set the medical staff by the ears.

It's been a quiet sort of day – well, all my days are quiet lately, so that hardly needed saying – and nobody has noticed anything much, but I've been keeping mum about a few things.

(Maybe that should have been 'keeping dad', strictly speaking, but at the moment I could be both, so it's a moot point.)

I've already mentioned that life in general is uncomfortable. Today it's been steadily ratcheting up from 'uncomfortable', and towards the evening it metamorphoses into 'painful'. But the machine stays strangely quiet and so I do too, though as time wears on it becomes more and more difficult to keep my breathing slow and even. If they'd bothered to put a monitor on my jaw it'd probably have kicked off at the number of times I had to clench my teeth, but I flatter myself that that's about the only thing that would have given me away.

But it's getting harder and harder and harder not to let even the softest of groans escape me. The pain is really getting severe now, waves of cramp that set my stomach muscles to iron agony. I've had these before, but managed to ignore them until they went away again. But these aren't going away – they're getting worse.

I'm in labour.

I wonder once or twice if it'd be worth asking if Alice can cook me up a nice plate of fish and chips. After all, the condemned man is entitled to a hearty last meal, and I could do with something to keep my strength up. But on the other hand, even if by any remote chance someone decided to humour me, the thought of eating turns me inside out. I'd probably puke it up if I managed to eat it at all, and poor old Alice doesn't deserve to have his hard work wasted. He'd probably walk in here and slap me with a kipper, and I can't be having with that, not in my present predicament. I've got enough botheration going on without adding to it.

Presently, of course, the one thing happens that I can't control at all.

My ability to add to my captors' workload by pissing all over myself was unfortunately compromised by my being catheterised from the start. So even though I've already reminded myself that this accident is something I must expect, even I am more startled than I ought to be when my belly and groin are suddenly the recipient of a warm gush of fluid, and the possibility of keeping my status quiet is suddenly over.

The monitors, of course, have been waiting for that. They kick off in all directions, and the medical staff converge on me like a litter of starving piglets when somebody drops a bucket of swill. Measurements are taken, notes are made, instructions are given; not to me, of course, but to pretty well everyone else. There's a sense of hushed frenzy as they stare down at my now monitor-laden belly, as though only the slenderest of threads is holding them back from plunging forward to tear the child from it by brute force.

I wish they would. As more time passes, how desperately I wish they would. Having lain here for so long, I'm as weak as a kitten; muscles that used to be made of steel are now aching rags, unable to withstand the stresses that rip through them. It grows harder and harder still not to make any sound, though now I can't help but gasp at the onset of every contraction, and pant at the end of it.

As far as my limited understanding of such things goes, I believe that pain relief is usually offered to women when they go through this. Nobody offers it to me, and nobody explains why not, though I daresay it's just that they can't be arsed. Either that or they're worried about it affecting Damien or something. If I was actually a woman this would probably worry me less, though I suppose I wouldn't be any more pleased about it; after all, women are designed by nature to survive this sort of thing. This is a minor flaw as regards _my_ design, and I reckon I'm entitled to feel some concern on that score – having watched a few films where having things bursting out of a chap's belly has a decidedly negative effect on his wellbeing, it's not a good thing to be remembering right now.

I suppose that the hormones which have triggered the birth may well have been delivered to me via the damned thing I'm hooked up to. I don't know enough about it to have any opinion on that score, and quite frankly right now it's not uppermost on my mind. That's occupied almost exclusively by the sheer physical endurance necessary to cope with the succession of cresting waves of agony that roll through my body, each worse than the last.

An eddy in the crowd around me signals something that registers on the edge of my consciousness. Through the shuddering tension and the stink of my sweat comes coolness, the smell of crisp white linen sheets.

Of course. _They_ have to be present for the finale.

I can't move. I can't do a damned thing to help myself bear this, and it's tearing me apart, tearing me...

I feel the softest touch of cool fingers across my brow, and the breath of a voice: _"Querido..."_

My mouth is as dry as sandpaper, and the room's so hot it feels as if I'm breathing in plasma exhaust. If only someone would give me a drop of water to ease the thirst.

I open my eyes. She's lovelier than ever.

"Let me sit up," I gasp. "Please. It's killing me." Another contraction roars over me, this one so strong that the world goes away till it's over.

But I return to a world in which there is no longer a leather strap across my forehead, and my bandaged wrists and ankles register the removal of pressure. I hear Phlox draw in breath, and a few acolytes take a step backwards; the Devil is loose...

They think I've the strength to launch an attack? They should endure what I've endured for the past nearly forty weeks – in particular the last few hours of it. Then they'd know they've fuck-all to worry about from me. I couldn't kick shit out of a marshmallow.

But at least I can move. At least, at last, I can retrieve the dignity of being the master of my own destiny. If only in one small thing...

I have very little time. The contractions are coming so fast now that I have only a few seconds before the next will be upon me.

I have to sit up.

I don't have the strength. My body weighs a ton, my reflexes are gone, my muscles are wet rags.

I fumble a hand for the side of the bed, with the steel bar that anchored my wrist restraints.

Tucker's ramblings are loud in my head as my little finger slips under the bar, feeling for a microswitch.

Something moves under my fingertip.

The next contraction hits. I writhe, helpless, graceless. Nobody will touch me, nobody will help me, except that I suppose they'd intervene if they thought I was going to fall flat on my face on the floor and squash the little bastard even as it slips out of me.

 _Damien is coming_.

As it ebbs, I dream. I walk the corridors of _Enterprise_ , and people smile at me. Tucker walks into my quarters, bottles hanging casually from his fingers.

It's only a dream. But if the dream could ever become a reality, it won't do so in Alpha's world.

I salvage the last dregs of my strength and struggle upright, dragging my legs to drop over the edge of the bed. With that, I'm finished. I could never stand up. Although the highly volatile coolant gas the microswitch released is odourless, it irritates the eyes. Maybe that's why mine are stinging as I look across into bright blue coins.

During the dreaming, I learned what I could have been. Now there is only the question of what that other me would do without hesitation were he here now.

There's a panel right behind my feet. In the midst of the tide of technical garbage, Tucker said he would leave it with an open circuit right behind the vent. The slightest pressure on the panel will close the gap between the contacts – but not quite enough for them to touch.

I think that right at the last second Em knows. Her mouth softens, as though she might be about to blow me a kiss.

Then my foot slams backward, and the circuit arcs.


	12. Epilogue

_"Commodore!"_

I don't need the yell, of course. I should think everyone on the station would have felt the shock go through the superstructure.

"Damage report!" I rap out.

Mitcheson studies the screen and turns back to me, his face pale. "Sir, the – the medical facility – it's gone!"

"What the hell d'you mean, 'gone'?"

"It – it's just _gone!_ " He points to the screen. There's a fucking great hole where the medical facility used to be. The only plus is that the external hull didn't blow out with it, but then it was built to take practically anything an accident inside could throw at it.

Fire suppressant systems have gone into action at once, of course, and emergency bulkheads confined the damage. Only those inside will have been caught in the blast, and the salvage teams won't be looking for survivors.

"Well, I'll be damned," I say softly, very much to myself; and I think a few things. Then, much more loudly, I become the commanding officer I am, issuing crisp orders for salvage and repair teams to attend the site immediately. All reports are to be given to me directly, and I'll be the one who gets in touch with the Empress and tells her what she needs to know. _Exactly_ and _only_ what she needs to know.

This naturally won't include the details of certain modifications I made during that last visit to Sickbay. I've no doubt that as soon as she's done sending out orders for Empire-wide mourning she'll be dancing the fandango round her quarters, but if someone's going to be the scapegoat for this it's not going to be me. There were enough med-techs in there, I'll just pick one to take the blame; after all, there's not going to be anyone left alive to contradict me.

Later, maybe, she'll realise she needs powerful support, and with the Jupiter yards under my thumb and half the Fleet crewed by officers loyal to me, well ... she's a realist. Always was. And given the way she humped her way from one CO to the next, she must be something else in bed.

Reed, though. Even as I'm pretending to be totally shocked and dismayed by what's happened, just like everyone else, a part of me is puzzling away at the one part of all this that really surprises me.

Sure, he got a shit deal. That's part of life in the Empire. I don't think he could have been all that shocked by it; fact is, he could have done worse. The other two could just have had him killed out of hand. As it was, they tried to fit him into their plans, and he had a chance to live – a chance he chose not to take.

That's what I can't get a handle on. He was a survivor, Reed. What did he really mean, 'End of Humanity'? Was it true? Was that why he needed a way out, or was it just because he found he had a heart after all and had just gotten it broken at last?

Did they have to die, or did he just want to take them with him?

Well. I never will know now.

Anyway, I won't pretend I won't sleep easier without that Alpha prowling the corridors. Those eyes ... they gave me the creeps. Gomez – well, yeah, it's kind of a pity she had to go. She was a real pin-up girl, and I'd sure have liked to have peeled her out of her pants, but I'm guessing she was far too far gone with whatever schemes he had going or she'd never have turned on Reed like she did. As for the breeding program itself, that was on a 'Need to know' basis. I didn't need to know, and I didn't want to know. I was more than happy just being the grease monkey who kept their equipment running, to a point.

The rest of the shift passes in a blur. The blast did a lot of damage. It takes more than two hours before the external hull's declared completely intact, and only then can work start on picking over the wreckage in the medical facility.

"No survivors, sir." The report comes just a few minutes before I sign off. It just confirms what I already knew, but the motions have to be gone through.

"Standard salvage orders." They've taken body bags. Whatever can be found will be put into them, and maybe later someone will decide whether to sort the pieces. That decision's out of my pay grade, and I don't suppose anyone'll go to the bother of opening the coffins during the State funerals.

Everything goes smoothly into action. I wait long enough to see the first shots of the devastation inside the facility, and then I'm too tired to watch any longer. I send off a coded message to the Empress and say I'll send the details tomorrow – once I've carefully decided exactly _which_ details, of course, though I diplomatically omit that bit. Then I hand over to the Beta Shift officer and make my way wearily to my quarters.

T'Pol's crept on to my bed. She must be deeply asleep, because she doesn't wake as the door opens. She looks defenceless. Kind of like Reed looked, lying there like a beaten dog.

She's not so deeply asleep that instinct doesn't wake her as the bed dips under my weight. Normally I wouldn't even look at her face, only at the body lying there available for me. Heck, she's a Vulcan rebel, she should be thankful she's still alive. Whatever the terms.

Why should things be different now?

I don't know. I only know that the fear in her face wakes a wash of muddy emotions in me – one of which I recognize as a sort of shame. Life on any terms _isn't_ the most important thing. How weird is it, how ironic to laughable, that it had to be Reed who taught me that.

I reach for the lock controls. Normally she gets to use the bathroom at shift change, so she's expecting that, but I gesture to the shower room. Most nights she comes into the shower with me when I clean up (mixing business with pleasure, I guess you'd call it). "I guess you'd like to clean yourself up." And something makes me add, "Alone."

She's not buying it, but she's too scared to disobey an order. She sidles around to slide off the bed, clearly waiting for the grab, and I won't deny it, old habit's strong: she's lovely, she's naked, she's mine and I know she'll just lie back and think of Vulcan if I snap my fingers. Time's long gone when she even thought about trying anything different.

But I don't snap them and I don't grab. I look the other way and pretend I don't know how dubiously she watches me as she tiptoes towards the bathroom. The door closes with hardly a sound, as though she's afraid that any loud noise will bring me down on her like the horny bastard I've always been.

When I hear the water start running I lean forward and press the comm. button. "Eloise, fetch me a clean change of clothes. Women's clothes. Something ... well, just something respectable."

I sign off before she can ask any damn-fool questions.

What's gotten into me tonight, anyway?

I walk to the viewing port.

I hardly ever bother looking out at the stars; it's not like they change, they're always there. But tonight, for some reason, I find myself thinking they're beautiful.

'End of Humanity'. What _did_ he mean? Did I get it wrong, and was he just half out of his mind with the drugs they must have pumped him with? Did he mean humanity with a capital letter, or a lower-case one?

Not that it matters.

But even if the capital letter's probably way out of my league, maybe I could try just a little of the lower-case variety. See how we get on. Because tonight, the world feels strangely cleaner than it ever did before.

It feels like a world for dreams.

 **The End.**


End file.
